One of the best, most incredible photos that has ever existed. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, first place and third place in the 200m dash, respectively, Oct. 16, 1968, Mexico City. Wearing black to represent Black America. No shoes, black socks to represent the poverty in which American Blacks lived. As a representation of lynching, Smith wore a scarf and Carlos a bead necklace.

But they also wore black gloves.

They only had one pair, so they split: Smith wore the right, Carlos the left. But the man who put the medals on their necks, Lord David George Brownlow Cecil Burghley, was blissfully ignorant. When asked later what he had thought of the gloves, he said: “I thought they had hurt their hand.”